2018-04-03

Petro Yuan Smetro Yuan

If any nation wants to make a quick billion, it should start slowing buying up Bitcoin over many months and then announce it will price oil in Bitcoin.

In order to challenge the U.S. dollar's status as a reserve currency, a nation needs to have (among other things) an open capital account, liquid and transparent markets (liquidity enough to handle massive international capital flows and reserve holdings by large corporations and central banks).

Pricing oil or any other commodity does nothing to remove oneself from the U.S. dollar system. It is the same with cryptocurrencies. Cryptocurrencies will not become truly viable alternative until they become a self-contained ecosystem, when I can earn cryptocurrencies and spend cryptocurrencies and never have need to convert to another currency. Imagine for a moment that China announces it will only pay for imports with Chinese yuan tomorrow. Everything else remains the same. In which direction would the yuan trade versus the U.S. dollar?

At this point, I'd bet the U.S. dollar system suffers a catastrophic failure before the yuan is ready to act as a reserve and funding currency. If China was doing something significant with the "petro yuan," the odds of a critical failure in the U.S. dollar system would decline because pressure would be alleviated. I do not see the petro yuan as a game changer.

China is slowly building yuan infrastructure needed for reserve currency status, but it has a long way to go before it challenges the U.S. dollar.